Trashdome - Marvel Heroes VS Marvel Heroscape

Juniper wrote:

Michael Barnes wrote:

Is there anyone here who _won't_ dub either Kirby or Ditko as the greatest artist in comics? I'm a Kirby man myself- his stuff is still the gold standard as far as I'm concerned.

No one with taste, anyway.

The thing about Kirby and Ditko, though, is that they were more than just illustrators. They had powerful, expressive, and idiosyncratic drawing styles, sure. But both of them were prolific, and they possessed prodigious imaginations. Kirby in particular was a non-stop idea factory. Ditko and Kirby created a huge proportion of all of the significant superhero concepts and characters, sometimes in collaboration with Stan, sometimes not. And I'm not just talking about Marvel. Ditko created a raft of Charlton characters (and, indirectly, the Watchmen). Kirby dreamed up a massive chunk of the DC pantheon. Kirby, with Joe Simon, invented "love comics" and other whole genres.

It's unfair to compare anyone whose job description is "comics pencil artist" to Kirby or Ditko. Those two guys are on a completely different level from everyone else. They didn't just make drawings. They made damn near everything that's memorable in American comics.

Great post. I have great respect for both Kirby and Ditko for their creativity and hard work during the silver age of comics. I don't actually enjoy Ditko's artwork, or for that matter, most of Kirby's artwork. But their overall contributions to comics were remarkable and lasting.

There's a great interview out there somewhere with Kirby conducted by...Glen Danzig.

Have you ever seen the concept art that Kirby did for the LORD OF LIGHT (yes, the Zelazny novel) theme park that was planned? It's CRAZY stuff. If it ever got built, people's minds would have been completely blown.

Something that really separates Kirby, Ditko, and a lot of the other comics art pioneers is that they were really kind of creating a lot of the visual grammar of the medium. They were artists first and foremost, illustrators second. Today's comics artists grow up copying styles and learning more about Todd McFarlane than they do about fine art technique, and it shows. You can really tell the difference between illustrators who understand fine art principles and those who are simply mimicking other comics artists.

I really love some of Kirby's FOURTH WORLD stuff, particularly NEW GODS. It's so totally Kirby- there's this amazing level of enthusiasm in the artwork, and almost this bizarre, sense of noble pageantry in his paneling and positioning that isn't like anything else. Every single sentence ends, literally, in an exclamation point.

Chris Ware, I'm so sick and tired of seeing young graphic designers knock off his style that I've gotten tired of the source material.

Kevin O'Neil is awesome...a very unique style that some people seem to despise.

One of the first comics I ever owned was Kamandi #5. It was a weird, post-apocalyptic adventure series starring this blond teenager named Kamandi (the last boy on Earth!). Anyway, he is squaring off in an arena combat against this huge ape-man who is wielding a freaking tree log as a club. There was this amazingly brutal quality to the scene, which of course does not end with Kamandi's brains splattered all over the sand. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Kamandi didn't even get tagged once.

A few years later, Kirby came back to Marvel to work on Captain America for a while, so that he could be around to do Captain America & the Falcon #200. Unfortunately, Kirby wasn't doing his best work at that point. Ordinary thugs looked grotesquely muscular, and Cap often looked weirdly shocked by even ordinary circumstances. Sam Wilson (the Falcon) sort of looked like James Brown in one issue. It was all very disappointing.

Michael Barnes wrote:

Chris Ware, I'm so sick and tired of seeing young graphic designers knock off his style that I've gotten tired of the source material.

Haven't you found that Kirby has this problem far, far more then Ware does? Anybody see Godland on the shelves lately? It's basically a 100% Kirby rip-off (read: homage). There's thousands of comics that lift his style... maybe it's the time that does it.

Marvel Heroes = 11
Shellhead
Ken B.
Southernman
mjl1783
metalface13
maka
hancock.tom
Almalik
Rliyen
MattLoter
JonJacob
Juniper


Marvel Heroscape = 12
Michael Barnes
kookoobah
Merkles
joebelanger
Octavian
lj1983
Notahandle
the*mad*gamer
Death and Taxis
MrZir
Beisaic
mrmarcus
The Expanding Man

Shellhead wrote:

One of the first comics I ever owned was Kamandi #5. It was a weird, post-apocalyptic adventure series starring this blond teenager named Kamandi (the last boy on Earth!). Anyway, he is squaring off in an arena combat against this huge ape-man who is wielding a freaking tree log as a club. There was this amazingly brutal quality to the scene, which of course does not end with Kamandi's brains splattered all over the sand. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Kamandi didn't even get tagged once.

MUST WATCH:

I voted for Marvel Heroes, but I didn't do it in the clearest way possible. Therefore, Marvel Heroes wins with 12 votes, because ties go to the game with the longest rulebook.

As a 12 year old kid I really loved the old Kirby FF stuff (my Dad would just shake his head as I would spend a year's worth of paper route money in the Comic Shop in Vancouver during our summer vacations, trying to work backwards to #1 on the old FF issues) but wasn't a big fan of his later stuff. Now I'm reading the first Fourth World omnibus and getting a big kick out of it (too bad DC had a bunch of the faces redrawn). It's impressive as hell that he was able write and draw four books at a time, even if they were bi-monthly.

I'd love someone to be able to put out an impartial behind the scenes book about Marvel in the early 60's to see who was responsible for what. It sucks that Kirby didn't seem to get the same recognition as Lee until after his death.

Tough call on Kirby or Ditko. I'd have to go with Kirby, but I really like Ditko's Dr. Strange and it's hard to imagine a big musclebound Spiderman if he had been drawn by anyone else.

I like Godland (Basil Cronus has some great lines), but it's not even as though the artist is pretending to be "inspired" by Kirby - it's like the artist spent several thousand hours drawing over Kirby artwork until he had it memorized.

Ok, so Heroscape won because

a) Marvel Heroes is too complicated (no rules should be longer than 4 pages!),
b) little kids won't enjoy it,
c) the fights in Marvel Heroes don't feel like a real fights(?), and
d) you have to roll dice, which means sometimes the Hulk doesn't win.


WTF? Lemme double check the URL here, I think Firefox is doing something weird.

Almalik wrote:

Ok, so Heroscape won because

a) Marvel Heroes is too complicated (no rules should be longer than 4 pages!),
b) little kids won't enjoy it,
c) the fights in Marvel Heroes don't feel like a real fights(?), and
d) you have to roll dice, which means sometimes the Hulk doesn't win.


WTF? Lemme double check the URL here, I think Firefox is doing something weird.

Nooo. I voted for Marvel Heroes! Where's my vote? Don't make me demonstrate in the streets of Tehran!

Michael Barnes wrote:

Chris Ware, I'm so sick and tired of seeing young graphic designers knock off his style that I've gotten tired of the source material.

I could never tire of Chris Ware. He is a fucking brilliant writer and sublimely superb illustrator. His hand rendered lettering & embellishes in addition to his masterful combination of art nouveau, art deco & dada inspired layouts B-L-O-W-S away everything in the market today.

What few imitators I've seen, (maybe one) can't even come within a kjillion miles to matching his stuff. Period.

Actually kookoobah never actually voted, sure he said he'd probably enjoy Marvel heroscape more, but never actually voted, so Marvel Heroes wins 12 to 11

WoooooooooohooooooOO!!!!!!!!!!!!